Homemade Fluffy Butter Frosting on the Happy Cake for Mother's Day

Here is the second cake I made, this time for Mother's Day.

I used Duncan Hines Confetti Cake Mix to make the cake, and this time I decided to make the frosting myself.

Here are the cakes out of the oven.

Here is the frosting finished, which I added yellow food  coloring to in honor of Spring time. My boyfriend decided to call a Happy Cake.

The frosting recipe comes from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and it is described as being light and airy.

Fluffy Butter Frosting
Enough frosting for an 8 or 9 inch cake.
4 tablespoons butter (I use unsalted)
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, divided
2 egg whites
Cream the butter, and add 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar.
Beat the egg whites in a mixer until foamy and thick. Add the 1 cup confectioners' sugar. Beat until stiff.
Blend together the two mixtures. If the frosting is too liquidity add more confectioners' sugar to make it easier to spread on the cake. The frosting hardens as it sits.

Note:
If you add your sugar to the egg whites too early, this is as stiff as your egg whites will get. This is not what you want.

When you are all done you get this?

And if you are lucky enough, your guests will eat practically all your cake.

Hope everyone had a great Mother's day!
So this is what I made for Mother's Day as part of our family celebration.
What did you make for Mother's Day?

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Southwestern Chicken

My boyfriend was craving southwest chicken. He is a salsa fan. He often picks up the organic salsa in the produce section when he is craving salsa and eats it with his eats his eggs. So he told me that he wanted a southwestern chicken dish. I remembered in my cookbooks that I have a Southwestern Cookbook  from Favorite Recipes published in 1989. So I decided to make....

Keam's Canyon Chicken
Makes 4 servings
4 cups tortilla chips, processed into rough coarse crumbs with a food processor or crushed in a plastic bag with a rolling pin
1 chicken, cut up into pieces (recipe calls for 3 to 3 1/2 lbs but can be as big as 4 1/2 lbs), or various chicken pieces you like
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 package (1 1/4 ounces) taco seasoning mix
2 to 3 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
1/2 cup sour cream or more
1 medium avocado if desired
1 lemon, cut into wedges
Salsa
Preheat your oven to 350 F. Place tortilla chips on a large plate. Mix butter and taco seasoning mix in pie plate. Dip chicken in butter taco mixture than cover with tortilla chips than place in a 13x9x2-inch pan. Bake, uncovered, 1 hour or until juices run clean .

To serve:
Arrange chicken on a bed of shredded lettuce, top with sour cream (or place it on the side), along with the salsa, and a slice of avocado if desired.

The dish went over very well. It was might tasty. Maybe the only extra it needs now is a little guacamole?

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Review: Other People's Money at the Ivoryton Playhouse

Image courtesy of the Ivoryton Playhouse

Other People's Money, the last time I heard those words uttered concerned the movie which was released originally on October 18, 1991 starring Danny DeVito. It was based on the play written by Jerry Sterner, which is the play being performed right now at the Ivoryton Playhouse.

Edward Kasser* (pictured above) plays Lawrence Garfinkle, a Corporate Raider interested in Rhode Island's New England Wire and Cable.

Gary Allen Poe* is Andrew "Jorgy" Jorgenson,the owner Rhode Island business

Dennis Fox* plays William Coles, the President who runs the company

Denise Walker plays Bea Sullivan, Jorgy's assistant

Elizabeth Donnelly*(pictured above) is Kate Sullivan, Bea's daughter

The story involves issues of ethics as well as social and economic justice versus objectivism or capitalism.  This is a game of strategy and power and money. Jerry Sterner, the man who wrote the play, spent much of his life in business before play writing that is why this story is so interesting.

Maggie McGlone Jennings directs this production.

See the world of business from the top down. The actors performed their parts to a tee; the stage fit the scene, and the actors were fitted to fit their parts. I personally would love to own the shoes worn by Ms. Donnelly. The only message left is to go and see the show!

The Cake that Cassandra Made

 This is what I started with to make my cake for my birthday party.  I decided on a Strawberry Cake for Spring because the day before I had been outside for The Big Event with Quinnipiac University and my team was working outside and it was 39 degrees. We were all freezing but we worked hard despite the cold.

Along time ago I took a cake decorating class and although I enjoyed it I found I had some difficulty I found I was very much the perfectionist when it comes to creating the little roses, leaves, flowers, and etc.
Recently I attended the Cake Decorating with King Arthur Flour - Community Education Series hosted by Chef Dennis Littley and King Arthur Flour. The hangout renewed my interest in cake decorating once more.

 I purchased Wilton 9 inch cake pans just for the occasion from my local Jo-ann Fabrics store.

I sprayed the pan with no-stick cooking spray and the cakes came out of the pan very easily.

 I trimmed one of the cakes, but I don't know where my head was (actually I must have been having one of those blonde moments) because I didn't trim the top of the other cake as I should have.

 I purchased 2 cans of vanilla frosting.

 In order to not pull up the crumbs you have to really pile up the frosting.

 Now the inside of the cake is pink that is why I used the pink decorator frosting.

You can see the cake split, and this because I didn't trim the other cake. Split cake or not, the cake still tasted wonderfully.

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Passover Seder Invitation and Matzah Brittle

This week my friend and I were invited to a Passover Seder. This week is extraordinary because Passover and Easter fall in the same week. We celebrated the story of Exodus reading from the haggadah in English. About twenty people had been invited.

These are the symbols of the Seder Feast. There is  clockwise: fruit (apples with walnuts and cinnamon), parsley, horseradish (the root, and ground), egg, and lamb.

We ate Matzah, and drank wine.

We had a Christian version of the Jewish Passover Seder. Our meal consisted of turkey, green beans, salad, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted white potatoes, and carrots.

Everyone looked like they had a wonderful time. It was a time of learning and of faith. A time to rejoice in a people and a time to rejoice in each other. A time to rejoice in food.

For dessert there were almond macrons, dates, noodle kugel and matzah brittle which I brought.

The brittle was a hit and the plate was cleaned!

Here it is fresh out of the oven.
I found the original recipe at Dying for Chocolate.
And it all started with a matzah.

English: "Holyland" brand matzah, machine-made in Jerusalem and purchased at Trader Joes in the United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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